Controller area network performance parameters measurement

ABSTRACT

A method for measuring bus traffic on a controller area network (CAN) is described. Accordingly, in one embodiment, a digital oscilloscope acquires the CAN bus signal in form of a waveform in real-time. The waveform is converted into a bit stream and the bit steam analyzed to carry out various measurements in a CAN measurement system. The method can be used for continuous monitoring of bus traffic and measurements of various parameters related such as bus occupancy by a particular node. The acquired data may be analyzed for measuring bus occupancy by various types of CAN message frames. The user is presented with a data display and a graphical display of the measurements. Also, the user is allowed to feed identifier of a node to obtain measurements relating to that particular node.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to digital storage oscilloscope and more particularly to the controller area network measurements.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Controller area network (CAN) is a communication network for message transaction in a small-scale distributed environment. Usually, a CAN network is used for transferring the information to and from the sensors and actuators in a system or sub-system for real-time control applications. It is used extensively in the automotive and control systems to transmit and receive messages across different electronic control units (nodes).

The CAN bus was designed to operate at speeds up to 1 Mbps. Data is transmitted in messages containing between 0 to 8 bytes. Each message has a header called identifier that is 11 bits or 29 bits long. Based on the identifier, the individual nodes decide whether or not to process the message and also determine the priority of the message in terms of competition for bus access.

When two nodes start transmitting the message simultaneously in a controller area network the higher priority message overrides the lower priority message. Therefore, the node with lowest priority once again tries to gain access on the bus when the bus is idle. It may however be possible that the lower priority node never gets an access to the bus for transmission. These messages will have more latency time compared to the high priority messages. This latency prevents the CAN bus from operating on the real time system where all the messages have to be transmitted at regular intervals without any latency.

In order to design a controller area network and to ensure that low priority messages are missed only to least extent, bus traffic measurements may be required to be carried out. The effectiveness of transmission (throughput) is gauged based on the amount of data transmitted in a given time.

Generally, CAN analyzers are used for analyzing bus traffic on a CAN network. They may form part of the CAN network and may be used to continuously monitor and display the bus traffic measurements. Further, a designer may be required to comply with performance requirements for the CAN network for efficient use of CAN network communication, which may involve several iterations.

However, there is a requirement of much detailed information on CAN performance parameters in order to optimize a design of a CAN network. Also, since design of CAN network may involve several iterations to achieve a desired message transfer, Bus occupancy measurement is required.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A method for measuring bus traffic on a controller area network (CAN) is described. In one embodiment, a digital oscilloscope acquires the CAN bus signal in form of a waveform in real-time. The waveform is converted into a bitstream and the bitstream is used to carry out various measurements in a CAN measurement system. The method can be used for continuous monitoring of bus traffic and measurements of various parameters related. Alternatively, a post analysis of acquired data may be carried out.

The method allows for separate analysis of individual nodes of the network. Exclusive analysis of various types of message frames may also be carried. The various measurements made may be viewed in form of graphical representation for quick analysis of the data. The invention can be implemented into a multiple types of digital storage oscilloscopes. Further, the invention is applicable to various standards of CAN such as for example standard and extended CAN message formats.

The CAN measurements are obtained by initially acquiring a signal from the CAN network in form of a waveform. The method thus allows for much accurate results. Further, the user is provided with various details such as occupancy of bus by a particular node. This greatly assists CAN network designer to design or modify the CAN network design.

Further, user is allowed to do a post analysis on an acquired data. The user may be allowed to enter a unique identifier for a node to obtain measurements related to that node.

Various measurements may be made available to the user in form of a display. The display may provide for a quick and easily comprehensive details of measurements allowing the designer to take further steps in optimizing the network or the scheduling algorithm, thus, helping in designing a reliable CAN network.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Reference will be made to embodiments of the invention, examples of which may be illustrated in the accompanying figures. These figures are intended to be illustrative, not limiting. Although the invention is generally described in the context of these embodiments, it should be understood that it is not intended to limit the scope of the invention to these particular embodiments.

FIG. 1 generally illustrates an exemplary set up for measuring CAN network performance parameters as per one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart describing the general method of measuring CAN network performance parameters.

FIG. 3 shows an exemplary acquisition record of CAN message frame as produced according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a display of measurements according to one embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

A method for measuring bus traffic on a controller area network (CAN) is described. Accordingly, in one embodiment, a digital oscilloscope acquires the CAN bus signal in form of a waveform in real-time. The waveform is converted into a bitstream and is used to carry out various measurements in a CAN measurement system. The method can be used for continuous monitoring of bus traffic and measurements of various parameters related. Alternatively, a post analysis of acquired data may be carried out.

The method allows for separate analysis of individual nodes of the network. Exclusive analysis of various types of message frames may also be carried. The various measurements made may be viewed in form of graphical representation for quick analysis of the data.

The invention described herein is explained using specific exemplary details for better understanding. However, the invention disclosed can be worked on by a person skilled in the art without the use of these specific details. The invention can be implemented into a multiple types of digital storage oscilloscopes. Further, the invention is applicable to various standards of CAN such as for example standard and extended CAN message formats. Structures and devices shown in block diagram are illustrative of exemplary embodiments of the invention and are meant to avoid obscuring the invention. Also, the connections between various network elements may not necessarily be direct and the data transfer in between can be subjected to encoding, re-formatting or modifications.

References in the specification to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” means that a particular feature, structure, characteristic, or function described in connection with the embodiment is included in at lest one embodiment of the invention. The appearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in the specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment.

FIG. 1 illustrates a general set up for controller area network measurements as per an exemplary embodiment of the present invention. A digital storage oscilloscope (102) may be connected to a controller area network (101), which needs to be analyzed for various measurements. As shown in FIG. 1 a CAN measurement system 103, for decoding and analyzing may be connected to the digital storage oscilloscope (102). Alternatively, the CAN measurement system (103) may form a part of the digital storage oscilloscope (102).

FIG. 2 shows the method of measuring CAN network performance parameters. The method involves acquiring (201) the CAN bus signal. The CAN bus rate may be set by directing the Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO) to acquire signals for a short duration of time, such as for example, 1 second. The DSO may be set to have a sample rate and record length of the signal being acquired. This may be set so as to ensure that ten samples for a defined data interval are acquired by the DSO. The DSO thus triggers on the CAN signal and acquires the waveform.

The waveform thus acquired may further be converted into bit-stream (203) for inferring various measurement details. Specifically, the acquired waveform may be converted into a bit stream using edge finding technique and the available value of data interval. The bitstream may further be decoded to obtain further information regarding message frames. Accordingly, decoding the waveform allows the Start of the frame and end of the frame to be identified and the bit stream may be converted into CAN protocol messages.

The bit stream may further be analyzed (205) to obtain information on individual messages. The various message types may be identified to be data frames, Remote frames, Error frames or overload frames. Measurements relating to each class of data messages may be carried out to obtain further measurements as described. Also individual node performance parameters for example time occupied by a particular node may be measured.

Bus occupancy measurements will now be explained. An exemplary acquisition record of CAN protocol message frames may be as shown in FIG. 3. Start of each of the frames is identified and referred to as T-start and is associated with an edge of the data stream. Similarly, the end of the frame may be referred to as T-end. In the FIG. 3 a CAN protocol message frame (301) has an associated T-start (301 a) and T-end (301 b). The entire acquisition record may have an associated start time (300 a), which reefers to the time T-start (301 a) of the first message frame (301). The acquisition record may be considered as terminated at T-end of the last message frame, which may be refereed to as T-stop (300 b) for the acquisition record. The complete CAN message time associated with the acquisition record may thus be calculated by subtracting the time T-start (300 a) from the time T-stop 300 b. This may also be referred to as complete bus occupancy time (Td) (312) for a given acquisition record.

The time elapsed between the end of a message to the start of the next message being transferred may be measured. This measurement may be referred to as idle time of the bus. In the exemplary acquisition record of CAN protocol message frames as shown in FIG. 3 idle time (310) between the pair of message frames (301), (302) may be calculated to be (302 a-301 b). The time referred to as T-occupy, for which the bus is occupied by messages, may be calculated by accumulating time associated with each message frame, which may mathematically be represented as: T-occupy=Σ_(i=1 to n) B  (i) Where, time associated with each message frame may be refereed to as B (i) and n may represent the number of message frames in acquisition record.

In order to obtain an accurate measurement of the load on the bus, the obtained measurements relating to T-occupy and T-d may be used. The load on the bus B-load may be represented mathematically as: B-load=T-occupy/T-d

The bus occupancy and the load on the bus can thus be measured and analyzed intermittently. These measurements may be available periodically, the time interval for which may be defined and varied. For e.g. such measurements may be updated every 4 seconds to reflect the bus occupancy and bus load for the measured time interval.

Message Frame measurements will now be explained. In order to get further information about bus occupancy, each message frame type may separately be analyzed. Accordingly, the message frame types may be identified to be a data frame, remote frame, error frame or overload frame and separately categorized. This enables a CAN network designer to look at the type of the frame occupied on the bus, further enables them to understand the performance parameters and accordingly re-design or modify the CAN network.

Time occupied by a particular type of message frames may be calculated for a given time interval. For example, in a given time interval the error frames may be separately identified. On analysis the amount of time occupied by error frames may be found to be high which is considered non-efficient utilization of the bus. A high level of error-frames may help a designer infer that a miss-synchronization may be occurring in the network. The designer may thus focus on reducing number of error frames in order to optimize the bus usage.

Node occupancy measurements will now be explained. Nodes of the CAN network may also be separately analyzed for better understanding the performance of the CAN network. The acquired waveform from the CAN bus network may be converted into the bitstream. The bitstream may be analyzed wherein the bitstream may be decoded to obtain information about the node that initiates a particular message. Analysis may be carried out for node occupancy from an acquired set of data available for post-analysis. In one embodiment user may be presented with measurements related to a particular node as requested by the user.

Occupancy of the bus by a particular node may be calculated by accumulating time occupied by a particular node. Since, accurate measurements of the time occupied by each frame and associated node information is already acquired, the same may be used. This allows separation of idle time of the bus and the same may not be accounted in a node occupancy measurement. Accordingly, the time occupied T-koccupy by a particular node k may be mathematically represented as: T-koccupy=Σ_(n=0 to z-1) T  (n) Where, T (n) refers to the time taken by n^(th) message packet for a particular node, while the message time for packets n to z-1 is measured. The associated busload (T-kload) caused may be calculated, which may be mathematically represented as: T-kload=T-koccupy/T-d Measurements of bus occupancy by individual nodes may help in optimizing the scheduling algorithm of the CAN network under consideration.

Each of the measurements carried out for CAN measurements as described above may be displayed as a graphical representation, as shown in FIG. 4. A display (401) may represent information in a data display 403 and a graphical display module (405).

A data display module (403) may numerically display the data associated with each measurement. The display may be configured to update periodically at a defined interval, which may be varied for different measurements.

To obtain a quick understanding of the CAN network performance from the obtained measurements the graphical display module (405) may be provided. The display may provide visual representation of bus occupancy and other related measurements. For example bus occupancy by a particular node may be presented in a pie chart. Further, comparative graphical representation between bus occupancy by various nodes may be provided. This allows the CAN network designer to quickly analyze and take necessary corrective steps in optimizing CAN network design.

In one embodiment of the present invention a user interface module is provided in the display (401). The user interface module allows a user to feed a unique identifier of a node referred to as ID. Subsequently, bus occupancy measurements by that particular node is presented to the user. One skilled in the art will recognize that various analyses may be carried out using the method and used for optimizing CAN network design.

The foregoing description of the invention has been described for purposes of clarity and understanding. It is not intended to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed. Various modifications may be possible within the scope and equivalence of the appended claims. 

1. A method for measuring performance parameters of a controller area network (CAN), the method comprising steps of: acquiring a signal from a CAN network in form of a waveform; converting the acquired waveform into a bit-stream; and analyzing the bit-stream.
 2. The method as in claim 1, wherein the steps of acquisition, conversion and analysis are carried out in a digital storage oscilloscope.
 3. The method as in claim 1, wherein the conversion step includes converting the acquired waveform to a bit stream using edge detection.
 4. The method as in claim 1, wherein the analysis of the bit stream is utilized in decoding different types of CAN protocol message frames.
 5. The method as in claim 1, wherein overall bus occupancy is measured by analyzing the bit stream.
 6. The method as in claim 1, wherein bus occupancy by an individual node of the CAN network is measured by analyzing the bit stream.
 7. The method as in claim 1, wherein bus occupancy by a particular type of CAN protocol message frame is measured by analyzing the bit stream.
 8. The method as in claim 1, further comprising the step of displaying the measurements on a data display and a graphical display.
 9. The method as in claim 1, wherein a user is enters node identifier information to obtain measurements relating to said node.
 10. The method as in claim 9, wherein the graphical display is a pie chart. 